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What's the difference between old junk clogging up your basement, or tools that change the lives of the people who put them to good use? Can a simple Craigslist ad make a difference to an entire country? Or a continent? Apparently it can.

My guess is there are more used and broken bikes sitting in people's houses in North America than can be counted. Most are not worth fixing and end up in the landfill. Dan Austin thinks differently.

Austin's mission, as founder of award-winning Austin Adventures in tiny Billings, Montana, has been to help alleviate the cycle of poverty facing the people of rural Africa. Austin launched the non-profit Wheels of Change (WOC) in 2010 to ship donated bicycles to Africa, where his company supervises adventure travel tours. The latest shipment of more than 300 bikes, parts and tools recently arrived in Namibia.

Austin says he places ads on Craigslist asking for used bikes. They are placed in a shipping container and shipped via freighter. Upon arrival, local kids are trained in bicycle mechanics and how to run a business. The shipping container is converted into a bike shop that retails, services and rents bicycles at a subsidized cost with 100 per cent of profits going back into the community.

For children in Africa, getting to school can be a daily challenge, especially as many live more than a few kilometres away. A bike can mean the difference between having an education or continuing a cycle of poverty. For people who need to visit medical facilities, like AIDS patients, walking can be a big obstacle.

Many bikes benefit two conservancy-based bicycle tourism projects. The bikes are owned by the conservancies, but members are given an opportunity to run tour businesses.

Wheels of Change has grown to include Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. The project has sold more than 1,000 bicycles, with profits supporting local orphans who are fed and clothed through a local organization, Catholic AIDS Action. In 2011, WOC delivered a shipment of 400 bikes to a village outside of Nairobi, Kenya. This now operates as a successful Bicycle Empowerment Centre serving thousands of people. The bike shops are all part of a network of 31 locations supported by a Namibian NGO, the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia, or BEN.

The possibilities for bikes improving the lives of Africans are endless. A health care worker can cover four times the ground. This translates into four times the number of patient visits and four times the number of medical disbursements. Girls in rural Africa are 70 per cent more likely to attend school if their household owns a bicycle.

There is no way of counting the used bikes littering North America, going to waste. All that's needed is an entrepreneur like Dan Austin. The prospects are so exciting, I think I'll go for a spin.

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